Finally, mid-sentence, he spots you.  Your face is like a glob of prose devoid of refinement.  He reads all of it all at once, just as it was written, and you see that old self you remember flash before his own eyes, and he falters in his conversation, and you see him say “Umm, excuse me,” and then he leaves the house, and his girlfriend, your cousin, looks quite embarrassed and confused.  She says, “I’m sorry, he does this sometimes,” at which even you cringe.  Somehow you know how much her saying this would serve to assassinate his new sense of himself and it becomes clear to you then that in a very significant way you know him better than your cousin does.  She lingers for a moment longer before she goes outside to check on him.

                Should you leave?  You consider the answer to this question ironically.  How have you come to care about this boy so much in just two outings set years apart?  And why should the sight of you send him running for the hills so dramatically?  You sense the answer to this last question circling around in your undercarriage, and it is unwelcome, ineffable, and of both the worst and the best parts of who you are.  You have to walk outside.

                You walk outside and onto the cement porch.  The screen shuts quickly behind you, but then slows just before it is to slam only to quietly latch itself to the frame of the house’s front door.  Two white guard rails stand atop square, plastic rods of the same color, and you hold onto one as you step down a thick case of six cement stairs and onto a familiar sidewalk.  You’re in a summer’s dress, and it is beautiful.  There is a breeze blowing through it and it is welcomed by you.  The heat beats down with unrelenting, fervorous joy and enthusiasm.  It has already created beads of sweat just between and below your collar-bones, and above the subtle cleavage the cut of your colorful, flowing dress provides.  In that moment, you become aware of how stunning you look, and smile accidentally.  You are over-joyed, and forget where you are completely for a few gloriously cosmic moments.  

                Your cousin brushes past you, near tears.  Your focus snaps to this boy, on the curb about twenty yards from the house.  He turns to look at you—and does.  His eyes are on fire with a kind of torment you are, altogether, unfamiliar with.  Decisively, he stands up, and walks to you.  He grabs you by the cloth of your dress at either side of your waste, pulls your beaded chest to his, and kisses you passionately.